Coastal and beyond protection.

Semper Paratus: The Mission of the United States Coast Guard

“Always Ready.” That is the mission of the United States Coast Guard, one of America’s six armed forces and the only military branch in the Department of Homeland Security.

The military may conjure up images of a typical soldier on the front lines of a war, in a tank or battalion. But our national security is a complex machine that depends on many functioning parts. One of those parts is the Coast Guard.

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A search for news related to the Coast Guard yields these types of headlines:

• “Coast Guard convenes a Marine Board of Investigation for Titan Submersible”
• “U.S. Coast Guard rescued 21 people within 1 hour across Tampa Bay”
• “Coast Guard seizes $186 million worth of drugs in international waters”
• “Coast Guard repatriates 44 migrants to Dominican Republic”

It’s clear why “always ready” is a necessary way to think in order to respond to such a variety of emergencies. The Washington Examiner recently produced a series on military unreadiness, which explored the challenges all branches of the military face in meeting recruitment needs. For example, Anna Giaritelli reported that the Pentagon has seen early success in signing up green card-holding legal immigrants with the promise of immediate citizenship as a solution to a recruitment nightmare that threatens to cripple its ranks as early as 2025. And Mike Brest reported on how Generation Z recruiting woes are worsened by the TikTok ban and Big Tech competition.

With these challenges in mind, the Washington Examiner approached the Coast Guard to ask about its specific needs and missions and what steps it has taken to stay “ready for” anything. Washington Examiner photographer Graeme Jennings was invited to photograph two Coast Guard training exercises, while we asked Rear Adm. Shannon Gilreath, the commander of the Fifth Coast Guard District, which covers the mid-Atlantic, how operations are going.

With a small service of 54,000 active and reserve members and an even smaller workforce assigned to the Fifth District (2,500 active duty, 674 reserve, and 141 civilians), “staffing shortages have impacts,” Gilreath said.

“There is no secret that the Coast Guard is facing our toughest recruiting challenge in more than a decade. Men and women assigned to the Fifth District fill large roles in the mid-Atlantic, from maintaining more than 7,900 aids to navigation to patrolling the 1.4 million square miles of oceans, bays, and rivers,” Gilreath said. “The Coast Guard is not currently designed with an in-garrison workforce that we can call upon to replace personnel gaps at operational units. While we are still accomplishing our missions, the shortages, particularly in the enlisted workforce, require us to manage personnel resources between units, which impacts our readiness and resiliency.”

When asked about services cuts and staff burnout, Gilreath said that with fewer people, crews work longer hours, stand watch more frequently, and may not be able to take leave when they want to. “This impacts their family and personal lives. The operational tempo cycle increases but without sufficient downtime to recharge,” Gilreath said.

Over time, resiliency erodes. So what is being done to maintain readiness and increase recruiting? “We are actively looking at how we can leverage technology to compensate for fewer people,” Gilreath said. “We are also working to leverage the talent of Coast Guard civilian employees, Coast Guard Reserves, and Coast Guard Auxiliary members to fill our gaps. Just last week, we honored an auxiliary member, Stephen Roth, as the first auxiliary master cutterman after 23 years of service on the Coast Guard Cutter William Tate. That type of volunteer service has been especially enabling during our personnel shortage, allowing us to cover a gap in the crew.”

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In an environment with so much competition for skilled recruits, the Coast Guard has to modernize itself as an employer, just like any other organization. “Tomorrow looks different, and so will we” is how Linda Fagan, the 27th Commandant of the United States Coast Guard, puts it. USCG is developing an app that will allow recruits to complete much of their paperwork digitally instead of needing to make multiple trips to a recruiting office. This will also allow for additional communication methods between recruiter and potential recruit, Gilreath said.

“The Coast Guard is also focusing on modernizing housing, healthcare, and child care for our members and their families. We have a newly implemented remote work policy to accommodate a wide variety of living situations for our workforce,” Gilreath said. “But we do need to find a way to appeal to and recruit college graduates into our enlisted workforce given the large number of young women and men who opt to go directly to college from high school.”

Joana Suleiman is the production editor of the Washington Examiner magazine.

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